Biodiversity: a common challenge

Biodiversity is the diversity and variety of life. A permanent source of creativity, many of us see it as a distant topic from our economic and social activities. However, most of these activities, and our common welfare depend at one level or another on the components of biodiversity. These activities also have an impact, positive or negative, on biodiversity.

The erosion of biodiversity at the global scale is a fact that is as important as climate change. Species are currently disappearing at up to 1000 times their natural pace in the history of biosphere, with important consequences on the capacity of resilience of ecosystems. Ecological economics and ethical biotrade aims at the preservation, and even the restoration of ecosystems through their valuation by fair trade. Taking into account the capacities of ecosystèmes and the input of each player of the supply chains are two major contributions to this approach.

For a brief introduction on the dependence of human well-being and activities on biodiversity, you can watch 2″40 this movie by the Vancouver Film School. To go further, you can read articles related to this theme.

Biodiversity from roberta ramalho on Vimeo.

At the practical level, structured approaches for taking into account biodiversity in business are gradually being implemented at national and international level. Our added value is to integrate biodiversity with other aspects of social responsibility (such as ethics, sustainability, quality) in a global approach. The concept of traditional knowledge plays an important part in the ethical and legal aspects of biodiversity.

The notion of traditional knowledge also has an important place in the ethical and legal dimension of biodiversity. Indigenous people have traditional knowledge of which the importance gor the preservation of wild and domesticated biodiversity has not enough been taken into account. The Convention on Biological Biodiversity and its Nagoya Protocol on genetic resources, the access and benefit sharing due to their utilisation (2010) are a framework that make it possible to value the most precious endemic resources.

Involved for several years on this theme, we offer several types of services, depending on your needs:

Biodiversity Diagnostic and Ecosystems Review Assessment (ESR) at business and local level, in relationship with Institut Inspire.
Dissemination and capacity building on biodiversity, related traditional knowledge, as well as ethical and legal aspects of their use.
Supply chain management for a “natural retuning” through collective intelligence, bringing global quality and value (for the product, the local ecosystems and the community).

Our references on biodiversity: